THE MEDIA EQUATION; A Reporter Who Scoops His Own Paper

By DAVID CARR

Published: October 2, 2006

Few Washington events, save Congressional page scandals and cherry blossoms, arrive more reliably than a Bob Woodward book flap. Every other year, Mr. Woodward, arguably the pre-eminent journalist of the last three decades, will emerge from his headquarters in Georgetown with a book full of federal intrigue, gold-plated sources and the dark arts of Washington.

Within hours, various aggrieved parties will emerge to say that they were misquoted on the record and mischaracterized by those who were off, and talk shows will be preoccupied by Mr. Woodward's latest offering. This time, the marketing bonanza preceded the publication date today of the book ''State of Denial,'' with The New York Times and The New York Daily News both obtaining copies last week.

Its exclusive blown, The Washington Post, the professional home for Mr. Woodward -- albeit one he doesn't visit very often -- was left scrambling, as was the Bush administration. This was Mr. Woodward's third book about the second Bush presidency. After two friendly tours -- ''Bush at War'' and ''Plan of Attack'' -- he decided to set off a grenade deep inside the administration.

People do business with Mr. Woodward because when he is good, he is very, very good. But as an army of one, with a name that has its own purchase on the American consciousness, he can do as he pleases, writing his books, going on television, dropping into the newspaper when a story heats up.

Critics have already said that he missed the Bush story while standing in the middle of it. But his work is not so much beyond consequence as above it, held aloft by his spectacular career and a superseding contract with the reader that he will take them inside the parlor.

Blogs and podcasts may be the future, but for the time being the headlines are still coming from one of journalism's big names, working in the fusty confines of a hardcover book. The leak was hardly a crisis for Mr. Woodward, who ended up getting an early bite of the apple. At The Washington Post, the experience of having lost the first crack at the work of its most renowned reporter -- an excerpt finally appeared yesterday -- is probably more sweet than bitter.

After all, having Mr. Woodward as a hood ornament on the enterprise, even one who husbands his most lustrous scoops for his books, has its compensations. Yesterday, Mr. Woodward was running out the door, but took a moment to say the relationship is highly mutual.

''The Washington Post is a great newspaper,'' he said. ''We have the best owners and the best editors. Being there helps me a lot, and while I focus on books, I do my best to help them in return.''

It is a marriage of very modern convenience, an exchange of brands that has little to do with a traditional employer-employee relationship. At a time when newspapers are hurting for attention, a paper will take it where it can get it. ''It is an accommodation that The Post has made, and they seem to be happy with the arrangement,'' said Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. ''The important thing is everybody is going in with their eyes open, but the fact still remains that under the arrangement, supremely newsworthy information assembled by one of its senior editors is not going into the paper.''

Mr. Woodward's excerpt was not the only book by a Washington Post editor that made news yesterday. ''Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell'' by Karen DeYoung, an associate editor at The Post, was excerpted in the paper's Sunday magazine. It revealed that in his final meeting with the president, the secretary of state warned of the dangers confronting the administration in Iraq.

And in August, ''Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq,'' a book by the Post's Pentagon correspondent, Thomas E. Ricks, took the story beyond the newspaper as well. Much of the big news these days seems to be coming out in hardcover, a troubling development that signals that some part of the story is not making it into the daily paper. ''It takes a long time to smoke these things out,'' Mr. Woodward said. ''You can't do that on a daily basis.''

But the book as news vehicle also creates an issue of custody and management -- both Mr. Ricks and Mr. Woodward have been rebuked by their executive editor for things they said on television while promoting their books.

Nor is The Washington Post the only one vexed by the issue. The New York Times ended up negotiating with its own reporter, James Risen, over reporting about domestic surveillance of phone calls that he used in his book, ''State of War.''

No one understands the contemporary primacy of the individual brand more acutely than Mr. Woodward, who manages the arrival of his books with deftness and competitive ferocity. A fresh success might change the subject after his decision to hide the fact that he was one of the people who learned of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a C.I.A. agent early on, even as he criticized the prosecutor.

But to the public, he remains the B.M.O.C. of Washington, a reporter who took down one president and seems poised to maim another.

''What Americans see in Bob Woodward is a guy who hits for a higher batting average than anybody else in the business,'' said Marc Fisher, a columnist at The Post.